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Tomas van Houtryve

In the aftermath of the fire, some wanted Notre Dame to be reborn with a new look, a contemporary one that would put the stamp of our age—and of the fire itself—on the cathedral. Others, those closest to the monument, just wanted it made whole again. The fire “was an accident,” conservator Marie-Hélène Didier says. “You forget. You try to forget.”

People working on the restoration will tell you: It’s the project of a lifetime. The pandemic slowed things down, and lead-safety procedures are aggravating. But sometimes “there were just five or six of us in the cathedral,” says archaeologist Dorothée Chaoui-Derieux. “That will never happen to us again.” For the next three years Notre Dame will be buzzing with workers, and then worshippers and tourists will return.

By 2024, if all goes according to plan, a drone in this position would be hovering just above the tip of Notre Dame’s new spire—a faithful reproduction in oak and lead of the one built by Viollet-le-Duc, which was destroyed in the fire. The new spire will be erected piece by piece through the hole in the stone vaulting left by the old one. Meanwhile, white canopies block the rain.

The copper cladding that covered Viollet-le-Duc’s Apostle statues was as thin as cigarette paper in some spots, says Socra technician Olivier Baumgartner. In restoring each statue, he and his colleagues avoided making the cladding too smooth, so as to leave traces of their handiwork: “It must exude authenticity.”

The quiet chapel of St. Ferdinand is transformed into a busy workshop as experts give its 19th-century murals a 21st-century cleaning, removing smoke and lead particles and stabilizing surfaces that are further imperiled by an increase in humidity levels inside the cathedral after the fire. Walls, sculptures, paintings are all being restored at once, Parant-Andaloro said—“thanks to the fire.”

Painting restorers led by Marie Parant-Andaloro (right) touch up details in the chapel of St. Ferdinand. Decorative murals added to the cathedral’s side chapels by Viollet-le-Duc were already in need of restoration before the fire—except in the nave, where his paintings had been chiseled away by an earlier generation of restorers. “In the 1970s, people detested the 19th century,” Parant-Andaloro said.

The larger-than-life statues of the Apostles were an addition by Viollet-le-Duc, who gave St. Thomas, patron saint of architects, a face made in his own likeness—and an architect’s ruler. The heads of the Apostles were taken off during their removal from the cathedral roof, which involved securing cables inside their interior structure.

Technician Thomas Pagès restores a copper statue of St. Philip at Socra, a restoration company in Périgueux. Statues of the Twelve Apostles that once flanked the spire were fortunately removed from the roof of Notre Dame four days before the fire.

The cathedral’s beloved grotesques also serve as fundraisers for Notre Dame’s restoration efforts.

While Notre Dame’s grotesques are ever present in modern versions of the Hunchback tale, Viollet-le-Duc’s creations were crafted decades after Victor Hugo’s famed novel.